


fast car

by 152glasslippers



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Song fic, yes i built an au around it, yes the tracy chapman song
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-31
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:07:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24363280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/152glasslippers/pseuds/152glasslippers
Summary: you got a fast carI want a ticket to anywheremaybe we make a dealmaybe together we can get somewhere
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 26
Kudos: 93





	1. i had a feeling that i belonged

**Author's Note:**

> I listened to Fast Car on repeat for four hours straight and this happened.

He never says anything at school, but she feels him. Leaning against his locker, his eyes following her. She puts her books away, and his gaze traces the line of her shoulders. She passes him in the hall, and he tracks her footsteps.

Some nights, he comes to the diner, sits in the same corner booth, and his eyes follow her there, too. While she takes orders, wipes down tables, every time she reappears from behind the kitchen doors. She refills his coffee, black, and he never says a word. He never says a word, and his eyes never leave hers.

They never say much at all. There isn’t much they don’t already know. Jaime Lannister, golden boy, crown prince. Weight of an empire on his shoulders. Poor, sad Brienne Tarth. Always alone, always working.

Cold father. Cruel sister. Clever brother.

Dead mother. Dead brother. Barely living father.

He waits for her after close or he pulls up in front of her house, midnight or later, windows down. Windows always down.

They drive.

She tries to remember that first night. How it happened. How she wound up in his car. But all she remembers is after. The sign for the interstate and Jaime’s simple question. “Do you trust me?”

And then she was flying. Wind rushing toward her, whipping her hair, startling a laugh out of her. The smile on Jaime’s face as he watched her, the first time he watched her.

The yellow glowing lights and the rolling dotted white line. Asphalt and air and Jaime. Always Jaime.

A secret, the good kind. The kind you keep because it’s yours. Because no one else has a right to it.

A secret, the fragile kind. Something so precious, the world could destroy it.

A secret, the scary kind. Because it’s _real_.

***

Something is different tonight. He cuts the engine when they get back to her house. She stops with her fingers curled around the door handle.

“We can’t keep doing this.” The bottom of her stomach drops out. Her hours with Jaime are the only time she feels alive, the only time she feels free. The only time she feels like herself. But he keeps going. “You’re exhausted.”

Jaime has never worked a day in his life. She doesn’t look at him.

“What would you know about it?”

“I know you.”

It’s the worst answer he could give.

“He’s my father.”

“You deserve more.”

Now she looks at him.

“What about you, Jaime? What do you deserve?” His eyes are a mix of fear and defiance. “Have you talked to your father yet?”

“It’s not the same.”

“It is the same! The life he wants for you—that life will kill you. It will crush you. It will bleed every single good thing out of you. You know it will.”

She wishes she weren’t crying. It’s too much truth, too close to giving voice to the secret.

“Are you listening to yourself? That’s exactly what will happen to you. How is it okay if that happens to you?”

“It’s not. But I can’t do anything about it, and you can. That’s the difference.”

“Bullshit! You can do something about it. You know you can. You just don’t like what you think it’ll say about you if you do.” She shakes her head, silently begging him to stop, not to say it. “Saint Brienne,” he sneers. “Rather be a good daughter than happy.”

“Fuck you.”

The sound of the car door slamming echoes in her head for the rest of the night.

***

They don’t say anything at school.

He stops coming to the diner. Stops watching her. She misses the feel of his eyes on the back of her neck, the way she held herself taller with awareness. She misses the shadows on his face and his knuckles wrapped around the steering wheel. She misses the feeling of possibility, of hope. She wishes they hadn’t ruined it. She wishes she could take it all back.

She never wishes she didn’t love him.


	2. leave tonight or live and die this way

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading a little fic inspired by a big song ❤️

She works. She goes to school. The nights she spent with Jaime become another memory. Like her mother. Like her brother.

She graduates. She turns eighteen. She thinks about the way he said _we_. _We can’t keep doing this_. She can’t breathe at night without her bedroom window open.

She works. And works. She crosses off days on the calendar, a countdown to nothing. She doesn’t see him, and the horrible thought strikes her: She may never see him again.

She finds a lawyer and signs the papers. She finds a nursing home. She sells the house and everything in it, everything that doesn’t fit into two duffel bags. She keeps crossing off days on the calendar, a countdown to something.

A countdown to some _one_.

***

She’s been to his family’s estate exactly once, for the twins’ tenth birthday party, the last year everyone in their class was invited out of obligation. Her height works to her advantage, for once: The gate doesn’t keep her out. She grabs a handful of gravel off the driveway and prays he still has the same bedroom.

Three stones, and he opens the window. He’s too far away to tell if he’s surprised or pissed. His voice drifts down to her.

“Back door.”

His hair is messier than she’s ever seen it. He’s bare chested and so, so beautiful. He takes her by the hand and leads her. Kitchen, stairs, hallway. It barely registers. She’s trying to memorize the way his callouses fit against her palm.

He shuts his bedroom door behind them, sits on the edge of his massive bed, and waits.

It’s her turn to talk, she knows it is, but his eyes are on her for the first time in six months, and the memory of it isn’t anywhere close to how it feels. Her skin hums. Her heart picks up. Every carefully planned word falls out of her brain.

“I choose happiness.”

Jaime grins.

Three strides, and he’s across the room. Arms at her waist, lips at her ear. She grips his shoulders tight like she can hide how close she is to breaking. It’s pointless. He knows. He always knows.

“I dreamed of this,” he whispers.

She laughs. Or sobs. Breathes.

“I missed you, too.”

He walks them back toward the bed, and she treads on his toes with her sneakers, but he shushes her apology.

“Stay.”

He slips under the sheets, and she slips out of her shoes. Her hands are shaking. She reaches for the button on her shorts, and his gaze never wavers.

He holds her, or she holds him. Her fingers in his hair and his hand on her back, under her t-shirt. Another simple question.

“Can I kiss you?”

This feels like flying, too.

***

When she steps out of her front door for the last time, he’s there. Leaning against the passenger side door, waiting for her. She thinks maybe this whole time he’s been waiting for her.

He left a note for his father and another with the truth for his brother. Her dad knows she’s going, but he doesn’t know where. She couldn’t tell him something she doesn’t know herself.

She has no destination and no plan. She has the wind and wide, blinding smiles and the weight of someone’s hand in hers. She has more than stolen hours and the sharp pain of longing. She has a future. She has Jaime.

He puts her bags in the backseat, and she winds her arms around his neck. He pulls her close, she presses closer. It’s easy to be greedy when she knows she can be, when she knows there will be more. Days and months and years of more. Their kiss deepens, and she lets it. It’s not a secret she has to protect anymore. It’s after midnight, like always, and there’s no one watching.

By the time the world wakes, they’ll be gone.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on [tumblr](https://152glasslippers.tumblr.com)


End file.
